Sunday, November 24, 2013

Osso Bucco and the Day of the Acorn Squash

It was so darn cold out today. And the winds made it a perfect day for a braised beef dish for dinner.
The recipe for Osso Bucco is from Twice Baked Twins. It was so delicious I ate my whole piece including the marrow.

Osso Bucco, from Twice Baked Twins 

Ingredients -
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 dry bay leaf
2 whole cloves
3 shanks , veal or beef
sea salt & pepper
all purpose flour, for dredging
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup dry white wine
3 cups chicken stock

Method -
Tie together the rosemary, thyme & bay leaf with twine, set aside. This will be the herb bouquet. For the shanks, pat dry with paper towels, they will brown better if they are dry. Season each piece with salt & pepper and dredge into the flour and shake off the excess. In a large pot, heat the oil and butter until very hot and brown the shanks on each side, about 3 minutes per side. Remove shanks & set aside. In this same pot, add the onion, carrot and celery. Season with salt. Saute until soft, about 8 minutes. Add tomato paste and mix well. Return the shanks to the pot and add the wine and reduce the liquid by about half, about 5 minutes. add the bouquet and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cover pan. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours or until meat falls off the bone. Keep checking and turning shanks every 15 minutes or so. You can add a little more stock if needed. The cooking liquid should always be 3/4 of the way on the shank. When done remove the bouquet and remove shanks. At this point you can blend the sauce and vegetable with a hand blender. Taste and re-season.

Now about that Acorn Squash. I stopped at Whole Foods the other night to pick up some things and to get the Acorn Squash for the dish I am bringing to my sister's house on Thanksgiving. The squash were a little larger than I was looking for but I picked 8 of them anyway. On the way home the same night I stopped at Bishop's Orchard for some escarole, the escarole at Whole Foods was just awful, and of course they had the size Acorn Squash that I was looking for. Now I have a few too many squash.
I roasted the ones I was not going to bring to my sister's house and ended up with four 2 cup bags of puree, 2 halves of a squash filled with Pearl Barley, Dried Cherries and Pecans, and a small dish of Acorn Squash Lasagna.
 
All of these went in the freezer.

And being a Sunday some of us took a cat nap...

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